New Day Rising
One evening, when I was seven, I fled to my room to escape being berated by my dad. I grabbed pen and paper and made a sign which I put on the outside of my bedroom door. It read “I Am Sad.” My dad flew into a rage and tore the sign down. My mom responded by picking the sign up off the floor and putting it back on my door.
From behind the door I heard my mom yell, “That’s how he feels!”
“I don’t care how he feels. I won’t let you turn my boys into pussies!”
“And I won’t let anger be their only emotion! They will not become you!”
And that ended that argument.
Up to my teens, my childhood was my parents’ battleground. The two central causes of the war were two radically different ideas on how to raise children, and the conflict between my dad’s Italo-American idea of family and my mom’s attraction to the women’s movement. Neither parent was willing or able to compromise, so the war became so hot that the only way out was divorce.
My mom became a single mother just as I turned 13 and my dad became the guy with a grudge who lived crosstown. While my mom tried to instill good, feminist values in me and my brother Tim, alcoholism and deep personal troubles prevented her from teaching us little more than slogans, basic decency, and how to do our own sewing – all of which are fine, but insufficient if your sons’ feminism is to go deeper than the skin.
For decades, Tim and I were caught between two kinds of masculinity, toxic and tonic. Toxic masculinity is something most of us know well, through experience and/or observation. It is the dominant form of American masculinity, not because it is the most prominent, but because it is the most focused on and the loudest. It is Donald Trump and JD Vance, Joe Rogan and Hulk Hogan, Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate. It is John Wayne, Dirty Harry, James Bond, and John Wick. And it is my father.
Tonic masculinity is much quieter than the toxic. It is kind, caring, neighborly, compassionate, and strong. It allows or creates space for others to be themselves. During the 1970s, tonic masculinity was Phil Donahue and Alan Alda, two media figures who were pillared as “weak” and “pussies” by conservatives. While a male feminist current existed, it was small, too small to be a movement or even a media presence. When tonic masculinity appeared on screen it was never commented on, almost forced to the background, or framed as “homosexual.” But it was there and many men gravitated to it simply because it felt good, right, and liberating.
The 2024 Democratic National Convention was a coming out party for tonic masculinity. We saw it in Tim Walz and the deep love he and his son Gus share. We saw it in Doug Emhoff, whose quiet enthusiasm for his wife Kamala Harris is an excellent example of true strength, of someone who knows who he is and is not threatened by the power of others or “The Other.” We saw it in Pete Buttigieg, Wes Moore, and Mark Kelly, whose loving devotion to his wife Gabby Gifford without abandoning himself makes me tear up. We saw it in so many of the men who took the podium at the DNC, a stark contrast to what went down with Trump, Vance, Hulk Hogan, Kid Rock and the other luminaries at Republican National Convention.
What we got from the GOP at the RNC was a Superfund site of manhood. Bragging, boasting, and bullying ruled the day. There was a lot of my father, men telling women and others what to do, not because they had any great insight into anything, but simply because they own cock and balls. But the epitome of Republican-style manhood didn’t occur at the RNC, but during the DNC, in reaction to Gus Walz tearing up during his father’s acceptance speech, and excitedly pointing at the stage, shouting “That’s my dad,” a moment that I would have loved to have had with my father.
MAGA Republicans reacted to young Walz’s proud excitement with jeers and insults. The wretched has-been Anne Coulter called the kid “weird,” and when confronted with her shittiness, claimed to have been referring to Tim Walz not Gus, an obvious lie. Coulter wasn’t the only MAGA oozing toxic masculinity (yes, it lives in women, too). A Whose Who of Who? jumped on Apartheid Bro’s Xitter for some cum-drunk bullying. And, while Trump, Vance and other Republican Big Men didn’t pile on, they were shockingly quiet during the ugliness. Their silence is complicity.
More than anything else that happened during the DNC, it was the Democrats tonic masculinity that moved me most and gave me hope. The second and third things to move me was the grand variety of people who hit the podium and the remarkable (for politics) range of age of the speakers, especially the elected officials. The old New Democratic Party is quickly dying and the Baby Boom’s hold on party leadership is over.
Though the election of Barrack Obama as president certainly opened up the Democratic Party to real diversity in the highest echelon of power, seeing significant progress was slow going. And though Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death gave us a good lesson in the perils of clinging to power until they carry you out, we didn’t see much learning from it. But a few things happened on the way to August 2024.
First, at 90-years-old, Sen. Dianne Feinstein died in office. Because Feinstein represented a very Blue state there wasn’t a repeat of the RBG fiasco; however many inside and outside the party did wonder “What if…” DiFi’s death also highlighted her mental decline, something that had been obvious for about five years, but covered up and denied by Feinstein, her staff, her colleagues, and the Party.
Second, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a close friend of Feinstein, handed power over to Hakeem Jeffries, a Black man thirty years her junior. That Pelosi stepped down (but not out) while she was still a formidable, powerful, and very much eager to engage in hard fights created a very, very strong precedent for other aging Democratic leaders, specifically President Joe Biden.
Third, Joe Biden’s refusal of the Democratic nomination opened the door to the diverse crowd of not only DNC speakers, but of their ideas, outlooks, and life experiences, and not just of women, people of color, and LGBTQs, but of White, middle-aged men and tonic masculinity.
It was a very good week. Hopefully a new day is rising.
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Welcome to Soriano’s Circus. I decided to launch this thing on a whim, after much thought. Since my brother Tim’s death last year, I pretty much stopped doing the Comment, but I didn’t stop writing. Tim’s death prompted me to start a magazine called Record Time, which features writing on records and music (second issue in September. Order here. ). I’ve also continued to comment on politics on social media, a forum I’d rather not use. So, after mulling thing over, I decided to fuse my interest in politics and culture to start something new.
Soriano’s Circus will be published three times a week – Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. It will be available only through a Substack subscription. Right now, and for the next couple months, all content will be free to subscribers. Starting in October or November, some of the Circus will disappear behind a paywall, so that only those who sign up as paid subscribers will be able to read along. Hopefully, you will throw some coins my way, if you haven’t already. Anyway, thanks for reading. See you on Monday!